Journeyman

NBC

I guess I’m past time travel dramas. There have been so many – The Butterfly Effect, Life on Mars, Doctor Who, Quantum Leap (not to mention Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure). Then you have Heroes pissing about with it and it starts to feel like an emergency exit plot device for when storyliners have painted themselves into a corner they can’t get out of. Journeyman sees newspaper reporter Dan Vasser (Kevin McKidd, excellent as Lucius Vorenus in Rome) spontaneously travelling back in time to important moments in other people’s lives — they are generally about to make a terrible mistake like kill themselves, kill someone else or watch Alien Resurrection. It dawns on Dan that he is being sent back for a reason and that reason is to help suckers out of their messes. Once the mess is sorted he gets back into the future to find out that they progressed onto saving starving Africans or some other such socially positive vocation. It seems no matter where in timespace the wormhole dumps you people can’t get enough of that It’s a Wonderful Life one-person-can-make-a-difference shit.

"Maybe they need to try wife swapping? Or maybe not. Aerial Telly’s relationship advice is responsible for more marriage break-ups than Claire Danes."

Rather like Nicholas Lyndhurst in Goodnight, Sweetheart, Dan’s personal life is complicated. He’s happily married to Katie but during his excursions into the past he runs into his rather better looking ex-fiancée Livia (played by a dame called Moon Bloodgood, a former LA Lakers cheerleader of Dutch, Korean and Irish descent – nice!). Lydia was killed in a plane crash 10 years previously, or so everyone thought. Turns out, she is another traveller just like Dan and turns up to help him out on his time travels. While Dan is turning somersaults trying not to fuck his gorgeous ex-broad, his wife is trying not to get fucked by her ex-boyfriend Jack who also happens to be Dan’s brother. Maybe they need to try wife swapping? Or maybe not. Aerial Telly‘s relationship advice is responsible for more marriage break-ups than Claire Danes.

"Dan will be faced with the choice between domestic bliss with his wife and waking up every morning to bathe his face in Moon Bloodgood’s warm Mick snatch."

NBC decided not to take up the full series of Journeyman, effectively cancelling it after 10 episodes. Something of a shame as this is a pretty decent show. It can get a little Highway to Heaven with Dan teaching people life lessons and generally being a pain in the balls social worker with a Tardis but it is well executed and quite a lot of fun. You suspect that at some point that Dan will be faced with the choice between domestic bliss with his wife and waking up every morning to bathe his face in Moon Bloodgood’s warm Mick snatch. Such conflict is the essence of all drama.

The best thing about it: Moon Bloodgood – clog-wearing, dog-eating, pub-bombing pie.

The worst thing about it: The occasionally simplistic Movie of the Week morality.

The verdict on Journeyman: Essentially daft watchable nonsense.

Marks out of 10: 7

Imagined: 31st January 2008